Literature /
The Graveyard Book

Edit Locked

Advertisement:

When a young boy's family is killed, he takes refuge in a graveyard. The dead there take him in, and dub him Nobody Owens (although his friends call him Bod). There, taken care of by a vampire, a werewolf and his adoptive (but dead) parents, Bod learns from the dead all the things he needs to know about life. But the world outside of the graveyard where he is sheltered is not a safe place. The people who killed his family are still out there, and they are searching for him. Badass ensues.

Advertisement:

A movie is, as of 2012, in pre-production over at Disney. HenrySelick was originally attached, but they gave him the boot and Ron Howard has been suggested.

The Graveyard Book contains examples of:

Ancient Conspiracy: The Jacks of All Trades are a good example of this. And possibly the Honour Guard. The latter "protects the borders of things", but the motives of the former, if there are any besides "continue existing", are unknown.

The Atoner: Silas. He admits to Bod at one time, he was worse than the Man Jack, which is why he joined the Honor Guard.

Bastard In Sheep's Clothing: Mr. Frost, who moves in and pretends to be a nice lonely bachelor to Scarlet and her mother, is actually the Jack who murdered Bod's family years before and is once again out to get him.

Notable in that he's used his magic to completely create this persona: while he wears it it's apparently genuine, but he removes it after he recognizes Bod and thereafter it's gone.

Advertisement:

Because Destiny Says So: In the Graveyard Book, Bod is being pursued by the Jacks of All Trades because one of their people predicted around four thousand years ago that a child would be born who would destroy their organization.

Bittersweet Ending: Bod defeats the Man Jack and grows old enough to leave the graveyard, to explore the world to his liking. However, he no longer has a proper home and his childhood friend Scarlett has forgotten about him. Also, Mrs. Lupescu pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to save him.

Chekhov's Armory: Every bit of the graveyard comes in handy when Bod has to outwit the Jacks

The overgrown part of the graveyard serves as a natural trap for the first Jack, who has a silken cord.

The ghoul gate sucks in two of the Jacks, and Bod gives them a chance to live instead of getting crushed by the closing door.

The Sleer "protects" Jack Frost as his master, dragging him into the earth.

Chekhov's Skill: Bod's ability to "fade," or turn invisible. When Jack Frost corners him in the house, this ability buys him enough time to escape with Scarlet to the graveyard.

Crazy-Prepared: Mrs Lupescu makes Bod learn (among other things) how to shout for help in every language of the world and some from beyond (for example, in Night Gaunt). Naturally, this comes in handy.

Dark Is Not Evil: The ghosts are as kind as the living. The vampire, werewolf, ifrit, mummy, and witch ghost are also nicer than they sound.

Dungeon Crawling: Silas and the Honor Guard attack on the fortress of the Jacks is described like this, with Silas, Miss Lupescu, a Mummy, and an Ifrit going down successive levels avoiding traps and fighting waves of enemies.

Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Jacks of All Trades is an organization of men from a variety of trades that are all named Jack. Who happen to practice some form of necromancy.

The book itself is an example of this. It's a book. About a graveyard.

Expy: From The Jungle Book, of course. There are probably even more than the ones that are listed.

Mowgli: Nobody Owens.

Mother and Father Wolf: The Owens

Bagheera: Silas

Baloo: Miss Lupescu

Shere Khan: Jack

The Dholes: The Jacks of All Trades

The White Cobra: The Sleer

Bandar-Log: Ghoul-folk

Chil the Kite: Night-Gaunt

Kaa: Elizabeth Hempstock

Akela: The Lady on the Grey

Fate Worse than Death: It's a Neil Gaiman story. Stand by for some horror, including: Becoming a ghoul. Getting trapped in mirrors for eternity. Getting buried in the earth by the Sleer, and possibly the fate of the creatures that were sacrificed to make the Sleer. Being Silas.

Fish out of Temporal Water: Bod has a bit of this due to the fact that he was taught mostly by the dead concerning their own times.

Historical In-Joke: It's possible that Silas the Vampire, living in a central London Cemetery, is a reference to the Highgate Vampire from the 1970s. If so, Silas clearly outsmarted his pursuers.

I'm Not Afraid of You: The Indigo Man is just an illusion, and once the children realize that, he disappears.

In Name Only: The ghouls who bear the names of famous public figures aren't really them; as they later reveal that ghouls' names are given to them after they become ghouls.

To clarify, they are named after their first meal, and prefer to pick noteworthy dinners. This doesn't mean they killed the figures, as they could have just eaten their dead corpses. Which is pretty disturbing.

Inherently Funny Words: Try to read this sentence in a sepulchral, blood-curdling voice: "Silas... consumed only one food, and it was not bananas." The last word totally undoes the chilling effect, and Neil Gaiman knows it.

Laser-Guided Amnesia: Silas is good at doing this, being a vampire. He saves Bod's life as a baby by luring the Man Jack away from the graveyard, and when Scarlett is worn out and traumatized by the events in Chapter Seven, he assists her with forgetting.

Monster Mash: The team that takes on the Jacks of All Trades include Silas ( a vampire), a werewolf, an ifrit, a winged Sumerian mummy, and a good-luck pig.

Necromancer: The Jacks can work magic, powered by death. Their powers are vaguely defined but include greatly enhanced senses (such as smell), magically barring and unbarring thresholds, creating personae for themselves so that they don't need to act when impersonating someone, and setting magical traps which can bind someone into a set of mirrors.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Bod has this as a character trait when he tries to help out the dead and living; buying a headstone for Liza gets him in trouble with a shady pawnshop dealer, and interfering with school bullies and their extortion ring draws attention to his person.

Red Oni, Blue Oni: Bod is the Red Oni to everyone in the graveyard by virtue of being young and alive, and thus impulsive and inquisitive. But compared to everyone in the world of the living, he is very much a Blue Oni, quiet, bookish and muted to the point of invisibility, especially compared to Scarlett (whose very name 'Scarlett Amber' suggests someone warm and vibrant).

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: If the Jacks of All Trades hadn't tried killing Bod's family, he'd never have had the means or even a reason to fight them. The Honour Guard only discovered that they existed when they tried killing a family that lived near a graveyard with one of its members in it.

What Happened to the Mouse?: Although the Sleer make several reappearances, we never do find out who their original master was... or indeed anything about him at all, except that he was alive so long ago that the plain where his treasures were buried has since become a hill, and that the Jacks of All Trades have been seeking those treasures for a very long time.

Kaa's Hunting/The Hounds of God: A young boy, feeling frustrated at the no-nonsense attitude of his mentor, attempts to escape his predicament by joining a seemingly fun-loving band of mischievous creatures. He discovers that these creatures don't have intentions as innocent as they made out and ends up in far over his head. In a fit of desperation he calls to a flying creature for help in a language his mentor taught him shortly before his capture. A large and fearsome animal heeds his call for aid, and its appearance strikes terror into the hearts of his would-be captors. They abandon the boy to the mercies of his rescuer.

Mowgli's Brothers/How Nobody Came to the Graveyard: A cruel and sadistic villain murders an entire family, but their infant son eludes his grasp. He is discovered and protected by a charitable native couple, but their peers urge them to give up the child because he belongs to a group outside of their social order. They are all eventually persuaded to adopt the child when swayed by the urgings of their leader and a shadowy predator living on their outskirts.

The King's Ankus/The Witch's Headstone: A boy journeys into an ancient and forgotten ruin underneath the earth, where he encounters a serpent as old as the ruin itself. The serpent is entrusted in guarding the priceless treasures that lie beneath the ground, and although initially intimidating, the serpent turns out to be insane and rather pitiful. The boy, against the serpent's wishes, robs the tomb of a treasure only to find out that the treasure is cursed in a way that makes it act as a catalyst for human greed. The boy is immune to its charms, but other men end up killing each other in order to possess the forbidden prize, and the boy ends up returning the item back to its original place to the smug satisfaction of the serpent.

You Can See Me?: Bod's signature move when in school is to be unnoticed and forgotten, at least until he starts to get involved with the other students. This also happens whenever a living character who can see the supernatural meets the Sleer.

You Can't Go Home Again: Bod was given the Freedom of the Graveyard so he could be safe from the Jacks of All Trades. But after they're defeated, Bod doesn't need it anymore, and that mean he can't even see his friends and adopted family.

You Monster!: SCARLETT of all people says this to Bod after thinking that he used her in a Batman Gambit when really it was an Indy Ploy, saying he's no better than the Jacks.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy